ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

How the future first lady overcame her fears.

A misleading subtitle isn’t all that afflicts this profile—which, rather than highlight Roosevelt’s “kindness,” points to an early experience of being tossed off a damaged ocean liner into a lifeboat as the origin of deep anxiety issues and goes on, in the wake of the deaths of her parents and brother, to trace the blossoming of her self-confidence under the tutelage of Marie Souvestre, headmistress at a British boarding school, and her initial involvement in social causes. The author ends with Eleanor’s first chance encounter with Franklin but expands on her career and legacy in an afterword. There’s a condescending tone toward others in parts of Becker’s narrative (“As she approached the settlement house for the first time, a wave of terror threatened to engulf her. What poverty!”) that is reinforced by a later quote from Roosevelt about how “the underdog was always the one to be championed.” People don’t remain quite so anonymous in Lewis’ pale, understated illustrations, though people in group settings do have generic features; in a capping final scene, there are brown individuals among the White ones. Eleanor Roosevelt is hard to top as a role model, but readers will get a more robust sense of her character from Barbara Kerley’s Eleanor Makes Her Mark (2020), illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Respectful (to its subject at least) but a staid, distant picture.